“I—you,” the girl faltered. “Why I thought you cared for Margaret. I never dreamed—” then somehow Polly, who had always so much to say, could not even finish her sentence.
“No, of course you never did,” the man replied gravely. “Still, I want you to know that Margaret and I have never thought of being anything but the best of friends. Now let us talk of something else, only tell me first that you are not angry and we will never speak of this again.”
“No, I am not displeased,” Polly faltered, looking and feeling absurdly young and inadequate to the importance of the situation.
Then, walking on and keeping step with her companion, suddenly a new world seemed to have spread itself before her eyes. Shyly she stole a glance at her tall companion, and then laid her hand coaxingly on his coat sleeve.
“Will you please stop a minute. I want to explain something to you,” she asked. Polly’s expression was intensely serious; she had never been more in earnest; all the color seemed to have gone from her face so as to leave her eyes the more deeply blue.
“You see, Mr. Hunt, I never, never intend marrying any one. I mean to devote all my life to my profession and I have never thought of anything else since I was a little girl.”
Gravely Richard Hunt nodded. Not for an instant did his face betray any doubt of Polly’s decision in regard to her future. Then Polly laughed and her eyes changed from their former seriousness to a look of the gayest and most charming camaraderie. “Still, Mr. Hunt, if you really did mean what you said just now, why I don’t believe I shall mind if we do speak of it some day again. Of course I am not in love with you, but——”
Richard Hunt slipped the girl’s arm inside his. There was something in his face that gave Polly a sense of strength and quiet such as she had never felt in all her restless, ambitious girlhood.
“Yes, I understand,” he answered. “But look there, Polly, isn’t that Sunrise Hill over there and your beloved little cabin in the distance? And aren’t we glad to be alive in this wonderful world?”
The girl’s voice was like a song. “I never knew what it meant to be really alive until this minute,” she whispered.